Elf, have you, or has anyone you know, ever taken Antabuse? It's pretty nasty stuff. For many people, even ingesting small (tiny) amounts of alcohol (such as found in cough syrups, OTC cold remedies, as well as quite a few foods) can set off the adverse reaction and make a person tied to puking into their toilet for the next several hours. Not to mention the headache etc.

You'd have to be pretty dedicated to reading every single label of anything you ingest while taking it. It may be considered "safe" but every single person I know who has taken it wouldn't wish it on their worst enemy. (Well, ok, one or two would wish that, but not most.)

Ick. I think I'd rather have to keep my hiv than to take that stuff for the length of time that would likely be required in order to do what they only think it might do. Antabuse has fallen out of favour in alcohol rehab circles (with good reason) and it sounds like "someone" is just trying to find a new use for it. Kinda like they did with AZT.

Jeff G:
Antabuse was prescribed in the 80's because it would raise your cd4 counts ... so some docs prescribed it off label for this purpose . I didn't last two weeks on it before I ingested some alcohol in cough syrup that I wasn't aware of ... it was awful .